


Narcissa

by OMHypothesis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: How the war tore apart families, Love, Narcissa's perspective, Reconciliation, Redemption, Siblings, Study of Andromeda, Study of Narcissa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:39:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OMHypothesis/pseuds/OMHypothesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are three Black sisters in an old Black House.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narcissa

There are three Black sisters in an old Black House. 

Andromeda is the eldest. She is tall and dazzling, with her long dark hair and bright, clear eyes. She is everything a pureblood woman should be: placid, strong, and excruciatingly politic. 

Bellatrix is the substitute-son, the stand-in for a male heir their mother never managed to produce. She is all bright fire and conviction. She grew up wanting to slay dragons and win the hand of the fair ruler. 

Narcissa hates her. 

She hates her sister Bella, with her devastating (and inappropriate) tongue, her fidgets, her rages, her insistence upon getting everything and everyone that she wants. Her feelings towards Andromeda are far more complex and problematic. 

Narcissa worships her. 

She worships Andromeda, who is everything a woman ought to be. She is perfect, from booted toe to silken head. She never wavers, never falters, always enchants without ever cozening or distracting. One day soon, Andromeda will marry, and take her rightful place as female ruler of the Black family. (A place their maddened cousin Sirius will never understand or achieve.) 

Narcissa feels that her sisters were named well. Andromeda is a goddess on earth. Bellatrix is a brash warrioress. But she, she feels her name is apposite to what she truly is. She is far less like a beautiful god, and more like his fabled Echo. 

She meets Lucius Malfoy when he comes to meet Andromeda on their betrothal day. He is golden and powerful, like the Sun, and cold and distant, like the moon. He is everything a man ought to be. He and Andromeda will rule the world. 

Her graceful, elegant, strong sister offers Malfoy a single long-fingered hand. He kisses it gently, enthralled. As the weeks go by and the wedding approaches, all can see how enchanted he is by her beauty and grace. Andromeda’s feelings are less apparent, and that — that is as it should be. That is, as always, the perfect response. 

Narcissa hates her older sister for perhaps the first time in her life. She hates her for her perfection, for achieving everything a woman ought, and leaving nothing for the rest. 

Two weeks before the wedding, Andromeda disappears. 

 

\-----

 

She stole out in the night, her things packed in a single bag on her back. She married a weak-chinned muggle boy in a profane ceremony on un-magical ground. 

Andromeda has given up everything she is, and all that she has achieved, for reasons no respectable pureblood could ever understand. It would have been far better and nobler for her to have died. 

Now all that remains is to find some last-minute solution. There is no time or space to mourn her sister, or who Narcissa thought she was. Andromeda is gone, erased, as if she never existed. In the meantime there is a treaty to fulfill. 

Bellatrix will not do. She is far too inappropriate. She is loud, she is stubborn, her hair and face are wild and untamed. 

They fit Narcissa with a pale green dress and adorn her fingers with silver rings. The golden boy who was so enchanted with her sister looks at her in distant bemusement, as if she were a little girl playing dress-up. Her timid adoration of him fades in the wake of that realization, and for the first time, she defies her family, if only in her heart. 

She aches for her sister. She cares not for Andromeda’s betrayal. She would give anything to have her back. 

 

\-----

 

Narcissa Malfoy’s marriage bed is cold, and so is her life. 

Her husband is nothing like the sun. Her family is crumbling without the goddess-girl to stabilize them. Sirius is lost to the Light, Bellatrix has married one of Voldemort’s foot-soldiers, and both her father and her uncle are dead. Her Aunt Walburga, driven mad by the defection of her eldest and the death of her baby, has holed herself up in a London brownstone like a gothic heroine. 

Narcissa does what she has been taught, and gives Lucius a son. 

 

\-----

\--- 

She loves Draco with a singular madness. He is the only bright thing left in her world. 

The Dark Lord has fallen to a babe born to a Mudblood woman. There are whispers of prophecy, whispers of fate. Narcissa did not like the Dark Lord, perhaps because her feckless husband so adored him. She did not like the way the Knights of Walpurgis corrupted the Old Ways of her childhood to serve their venial lust for power. 

As far as she is concerned, his vulgar end was all too deserved. 

She dotes on her new baby, and politely supports her husband in his attempts to extricate himself from the political bed he has made. In private, she thinks on Andromeda, and makes herself stand tall and strong. 

 

\------

 

Nightmare upon nightmare. The Dark Lord has returned. Her husband, who is a fool, has gone back to him without a thought for his family. Her son, who has his father’s blood, has turned to corruption.

Draco told her how he had offered his hand to the last of the Potters, and been rejected. Narcissa thinks of the child she saw in the streets of Diagon Alley. He was not tall, nor expertly coifed, but his hair was silken black and his eyes were bright with a strength children did not usually possess. 

Draco was not the first Malfoy to be found wanting. 

 

\-----

 

“Does my son live?” she whispers to what ought to be a corpse. 

Channeling the ghost of Andromeda, she betrays the Dark. 

 

\----

 

The Dark Lord is dead enough for his constructed corpse to stink in the MInistry’s holds. The world celebrates a ragged boy-hero. The streets are still alive with light and sound and joy, these many weeks after.

Though the door is tall enough, Narcissa stoops a bit to enter. Her eyes lift to meet a face she has not seen in decades.

Andromeda’s face is lined with pain. Her hair is streaked with silver, her hands gnarled with arthritis where they hold the half-blood child of a werewolf to her hip. But she still stands tall, and her eyes are still full of starlight. 

Narcissa steps forward, drops her face into her sister’s neck, and weeps.


End file.
